Professional Business Analysts / The politics

Saying no is part of the role

An analyst who never refuses anything is a queue.

Requests arrive continuously and most of them are reasonable in isolation. The role includes assessing whether a request is worth what it costs, and communicating when the answer is no, which is uncomfortable because the analyst usually has no formal authority to refuse anything.

The workable form is not refusal but exchange. This can be done, and here is what it displaces. That reframes a conversation about permission into one about priority, which is legitimate ground for a person without authority to stand on, and it puts the decision with somebody who can make it.

The other necessary refusal is of the request that is really a solution. Somebody asks for a specific field, a specific screen, a specific report, and the request encodes an assumption about how a problem should be solved. Accepting it as stated forecloses the analysis. Asking what they will do with it once they have it takes one sentence and frequently reveals a better answer.

None of this works without a track record. An analyst who has been right about consequences before is heard when they say no. One who has not is simply obstructive.

The other refusal worth practising is of the deadline that assumes the analysis is a formality. Where a delivery date has been set before anybody knows what is being built, the analysis phase is allocated whatever remains, and its output will be shaped by the time available rather than by the problem. Saying so early, once, in writing, is the only protection available, and it is worth doing even when it changes nothing, because it changes what the conversation is in month six.